A cash-strapped Mars Hill closes 2 Seattle churches, 1 in Phoenix

Mars Hill’s downtown Seattle church. This location and one in the U District will be consolidated at a Ballard location as the church sees a decline in giving and attendance. (seattlepi.com file photo)

The church has announced that its downtown and U District churches will consolidate with the Ballard church. The three congregations will begin meeting in Ballard on Oct. 12. The downtown branch is in the former site of the First United Methodist Church on Fifth Avenue. The U District branch is on 12th Avenue Northeast.

The church also said

The Phoenix church will have its last service Sept. 28.

The Huntington Beach, Calif., church will close unless it can increase giving.

Mars Hill has ended development of what it calls “a Los Angeles church plant.”

At the start of the year, attendance at all Mars Hill branches combined was about 12,000 to 13,000 a week, said church spokesman Justin Dean, but is now down to 8,000 or 9,000 a week.

And most of the drop has come this summer.

“We’ve basically found ourselves in a tough financial position,” Dean said. “We started the year the strongest we’ve ever been, but since then we’ve seen a decline in attendance and giving, and we saw a steep decline over the last two months.”

The turmoil surrounding Driscoll involves his allegedabusive conduct toward colleagues and subordinates. Twenty-one former pastors have brought charges. Demonstrators, many of them former Mars Hill members, appeared outside the church on a Sunday in August.

Driscoll has faced further accusations of plagiarism and use of Mars Hill money to sign up a consultant whose job was to artificially pump sales of his book to get it on The New York Times bestseller list.

Driscoll has taken a six-week “extended focus break” while charges are investigated by a newly constituted board of elders.